


praying you can set me right

by unrulyangels



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne's B+ Parenting, Gen, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24925522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrulyangels/pseuds/unrulyangels
Summary: “And stop doing that,” he says, reaching out to grab one of Damian’s hands. “The tie looks fine.”“It’s the dagger I swallowed,” Damian says, wrenching his hand out of Jason’s. “You know, just in case.”
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne
Comments: 12
Kudos: 193





	praying you can set me right

**Author's Note:**

> Canon whomst?
> 
> (Title from A Fine Frenzy's "The Minnow & The Trout.")

“You should ask someone to dance,” Jason says, frowning at Damian, who is jerking at the slim tie that Alfred had wound about his neck only minutes earlier.

“You should ask someone to dance,” Damian parrots back petulantly, his small fingers worrying at the knot at his neck.

Jason rolls his eyes. “You know I can’t do that,” he says. He is posing as Damian’s bodyguard tonight, waiting for Oswald Cobblepot to stalk into the manor and kidnap Brucie Wayne’s twelve-year-old son the way that Babs’ intel had said he would. Jason would have said no when they had asked, but they had sent Alfred to his door to do the asking, the crafty fuckers. “And stop doing that,” he says, reaching out to grab one of Damian’s hands. “The tie looks fine.”

“It’s the dagger I swallowed,” Damian says, wrenching his hand out of Jason’s. “You know, just in case.” He goes back to fiddling with his tie, as though this is an entirely expected, normal thing for a twelve-year-old to say.

Jason blinks. “Just in case,” he echoes. Bruce’s kid is so--weird. But then again, Jason muses, while he wasn’t swallowing weapons at Damian’s age, he probably wouldn’t have danced with any of Bruce’s guests, either, for fear of looking stupid. He would, he thinks, have danced with Reena Jenkins, though. (He looked her up, once, when he knew that Babs was distracted with her Birds. She moved to Metropolis with her boyfriend after graduation. She has a selfie with Superman on her Instagram page. He’s happy for her, and relieved for himself, too; it’d be kind of pathetic, he thinks, if he’d not outgrown either of the two crushes he’d harboured as a thirteen-year-old.)

He watches as Dick spins socialite after socialite about the ballroom floor, as comfortable with the giggling twenty-year-olds as he is with their perfumed, preening mothers.

“He is good at this,” Damian observes. “Grayson, I mean.”

“He was always good at it,” Jason says, half-irritated because he has never been good at it himself, not at thirteen and not now at twenty-three either. He wonders--fleetingly, inanely--if Bruce would have liked him better if he had been a better dancer himself.

“Brown and Drake are, on the other hand, making fools of themselves,” Damian notes. “As usual.” Jason looks away from Dick and sees Stephanie pirouetting with so much enthusiasm that she very nearly thumps an old man--Mr. Eaton, who makes a point of bemoaning Islamic terrorism whenever Damian is around--in the face. Jason laughs: he thinks that he should get to know her better.

He would, he thinks, like to get to know Cassandra--who is evidently as graceful on a ballroom floor as she is on a rooftop--better, too, especially once she has done away with her dancing partner. Bruce, Jason notes, looks more content, spinning Cassandra around, than he used to look at these things: his smile seems genuine, even. He has to avert his eyes when Bruce shoots that same fond smile in Damian’s direction. Has to dig his nails into his palms and remind himself that he is no longer the child that he had once been--and that Bruce won’t ever stick his tongue out at him behind Vicki Vale’s back again, not like he used to.

He watches, instead, as Cecile and Christine Vernier lean against the expanse of wall to Damian’s right, the both of them flushed, panting.

“He’s quite fetching, isn’t he?” Christine asks, fanning herself with one hand and beaming in an oblivious Dick’s direction.

“He always was,” her mother says, wiping at her forehead with her fingertips, “even as a child; quite the looker, despite his background.”

Damian seems to stiffen, as though affronted on Dick’s behalf, and Jason quickly presses a staying hand to his forearm in warning, as Celine prattles on.

“Not like that other one,” she says, crossing herself half-heartedly. “That one always looked a bit like an ass caught in an aviary. The Drake boy was, I think, a necessary return to normalcy.”

Jason stills. If Celine says anything else, he doesn’t hear it: the loud roaring in his ears drowns out every other noise. He only comes back to himself when he feels Damian jab at his side. “What?” he says, faintly.

“I said,” Damian scowls, mouth tense, “that I could regurgitate my dagger for you, if you’d like.” He sounds so earnest that the roaring sound in Jason’s ears abruptly recedes.

“No, don’t do that,” he says, strangely touched despite himself. He looks away from the Verniers and back toward Dick. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.” He watches as Dick spins Selina around the room, a cluster of women that Dick has already danced with almost burning holes into the back of Selina’s dress with their eyes. They should cast Dick as Darcy the next time that they remake _Pride and Prejudice_ , Jason thinks absent-mindedly, though he feels a small twinge inside when he realises that he is not a Lizzy or a Jane or even a Lydia himself, but a Mary.

“What do you mean?”

Jason turns toward Damian again. “Just, you know. Back when I was a kid, they said all kinds of shit about me.” About your dad, too, he thinks but does not add. He digs his nails into his palms again instead. “I am who I am, and it is what it is,” he says, shrugging. “I don’t care.”

Damian frowns at him, glancing away from Celine and Christine. “You know that father invented the whole kidnapping plot, right?” he asks, his voice more wary than usual. “Cobblepot is in Galonia. He--father, that is--just wanted you here.”

Jason blinks. “What?”

Damian rolls his eyes. “You’re not half as clever as you think you are, Todd,” he says. “Father has been wanting to say hello to you all night. The others, too.”

Jason flushes. “You don’t know what--”

“Tasos!” a voice calls from somewhere behind Jason. “You certainly clean up well. You should leave my boring little brother alone for a bit and come dance with me!”

Dick looks like magic, like some prince from a storybook, all dimples and thick hair and white teeth. His brows are furrowed, though, like he is worried that Jason will turn him down--like anyone ever turns Dickie Grayson down or away. Jason supposes that he is putting the performance on for all of their onlookers.

It rankles, a little, and Jason starts to say no--just for the hell of it, and also because he figures that saying no to Dick’d probably feel like a small triumph--but then he catches sight of the Verniers. Both Celine and Christine look aghast at Dick’s not asking either of them to dance--or else at his asking the help instead. It is their shock that makes him shrug and knit his fingers through the thin ones that Dick is holding out in front of him. (It is their eyes on his back, also, he thinks, that make him flush; and not the fact that he is still that thirteen-year-old kid that’d stolen Dick’s old sweatshirts from his room--not because he’d needed them, living with Bruce Wayne, but because he’d wanted them--only all grown up.)

**Author's Note:**

> ♡


End file.
